“I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.”

— Frederick Douglass

The Petersburg men had written Douglass seeking advice about supporting John M. Langston as their Republican candidate for Congress. He would be their first black representative, but earlier he had worked against the Republican party. Douglass called him a trickster and said not to support anyone "whose mad ambition would imperil the success of the Republican party."
1880s, Letter to the Men of Petersburg (1888)

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Frederick Douglass 274

American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman 1818–1895

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